


The Art of Deception

by glitterburn (orphan_account)



Category: Chì bì | Red Cliff (2008)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/glitterburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The instinct for oblivion is what drives men to possession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Deception

**Author's Note:**

> 1920s AU, sequel to [The Sound of Mist Falling](http://archiveofourown.org/works/204055).

The heat of summer has finally faded. The mists still cling to the bamboo forests of Moganshan, but the trees are making ready to shed their leaves, and the ferns shrivel and turn brown.

Zhuge Liang walks from his stone house down the winding track, stretching his tired limbs, grateful for the chill in the air. The mountain seems quiet lately, and as he approaches Master Yen’s villa, he sees the forecourt empty of vehicles and animals. Shutters have been drawn across the windows at the front of the property, but in the window of the little bungalow set back in a hollow of rock, a light burns.

He goes through the main house, footsteps echoing on cold marble and gilt. Flurries of leaves gather in a corner of the courtyard. The place is alive only with the sound of ghosts. Zhuge Liang fears for the safety of one particular shade. He picks his way up the stone steps, wet with mist, and pushes open the door of the bungalow. Moths lie flat on the floor, on the doors, creatures of soft dust. He moves around them, anxious not to disturb their rest.

The guest rooms are full of silence, heavy and uncomfortable. He puts his fingertips to the bedroom door. It swings open, and he enters. Inside, he finds Sun Quan sitting on the end of the bed, half dressed, shirt unbuttoned, starched collar curled beside him on the quilt. His hair is dishevelled by sleep. Across his lap he holds a gun.

Zhuge Liang stops, feels the whisper of his silks flow to a halt. He glances around the room. Even after two months of residency, Sun Quan still lives out of his suitcase. There’s nothing to suggest he’s leaving, but neither is there anything to suggest he’s staying. He’s as changeable as the mountain mists, and for all that Zhuge Liang has an extensive knowledge of weather patterns, he cannot read Sun Quan.

The damp smell of humidity permeates the room, hangs between them like a cloud.

Sun Quan speaks without looking up. “Yen Yi Sheng has returned to Shanghai.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

Zhuge Liang considers the news. “He left you here alone?”

Sun Quan smiles. He still doesn’t look up. He cradles the gun in both hands. “Twice a week, someone from the village will come to clean and prepare food and attend to my needs. Otherwise, I am alone. Except,” he holds up the gun, “for this.”

Zhuge Liang goes closer, eyes the weapon. “Yi Sheng gave you that?”

The smile twists on Sun Quan’s lips, hints at bitterness and resignation. “To protect myself. I wonder instead if it’s not an invitation. A suggestion.”

“There’s a tiger on the mountain,” Zhuge Liang reminds him. “A gun seems a reasonable precaution.”

A sigh, and now Sun Quan raises his head, looks at Zhuge Liang. “The tiger is in a cage, and so am I.” He turns, leans across the length of the bed, and pushes the gun beneath his pillow.

“You sleep with it?” Zhuge Liang wonders why he’s surprised. On occasions he’s slept with a book beneath his pillow in the hope that he’ll absorb its wisdom, so why should Sun Quan be any different?

“Why not?” Sun Quan shrugs slightly. “A man should carry a reminder of his own death. It teaches humility.”

“Indeed.” Zhuge Liang brushes past him and sits, retrieves the gun from under the pillow, and examines it. In his scholar’s hands it looks obscene, black and grey, an ugly blocky shape. He thinks of crossbows and swords, thinks how the design of these weapons evolved to include beauty as well as to inspire fear. The gun is simply unpleasant, unattractive, an implement with which to kill another person.

The metal is still warm from Sun Quan’s touch. Zhuge Liang sets the gun in his lap and looks at it.

“A Mauser C96.” Sun Quan looks out of the window at the trees swallowed by mist. “Imported. Expensive. Not a Shanxi copy. This is the proper calibre.”

“Yi Sheng is generous.” Zhuge Liang lifts the gun by its stock and slides it back beneath the pillow.

Sun Quan turns to face him. “I like knowing it’s there.”

Zhuge Liang is silent. He knows it’s not because the gun offers the illusion of safety. There’s a deeper principle at work, one he doesn’t share but he understands, for it fits into the cycle of life. Metal destroys Wood, Water destroys Fire. Man seeks his own death, is excited by the challenge of it as much as he fears it. The instinct for oblivion is what drives men to possession.

He reaches out, invites Sun Quan into his embrace. His warlord comes willingly, eagerly, hands framing Zhuge Liang’s head on the pillow, hands slipping beneath the pillow to find the gun. Zhuge Liang gives himself up to Sun Quan’s need. They seek destruction together, come apart, remake themselves, aware the whole time of the gun.

*

“Do you think it’s a suggestion?” Sun Quan asks afterwards. His shirt is drenched through with sweat and his hair hangs flat in his eyes. “You know Yen Yi Sheng better than I do. Is he—would he be the type...”

Zhuge Liang stretches. His body is weary, sore and aching, but his mind races, skittering from one thing to the next. Perhaps this is why men flirt with death, to summon this aftermath sense of abandonment that’s at once ecstatic and painful. “You already know the answer,” he says. “When we first met, you told me so.”

Sun Quan sits up, strips off his shirt and tosses it onto the floor. “He learned from you. Applied one of your stratagems. ‘Hide a knife behind a smile’. I am not his enemy, yet he would so easily make an enemy out of me.”

“Yi Sheng has never read one of my books.” Zhuge Liang turns onto his side, aware of the crumple of his silks and the wetness between his thighs. “He made me recite the thirty-six stratagems to him instead. Recitation is all very well, but a man who learns by this method does not develop the ability to think beyond the limits of the teaching.”

Sun Quan tilts his head. “Therefore...”

“Therefore,” Zhuge Liang says, “Yi Sheng follows one path and expects a specific result. In my experience, most warlords are the same; that is why warlords should not be politicians. They either think too little or they think too much. A complex man needs a simple plan; a simple man needs complicated tactics.”

Sun Quan snorts. “It’s not just warlords who think too much.”

Zhuge Liang wraps a hand around Sun Quan’s wrist. “The attack from Yi Sheng is indirect. He will not be the instigator, merely the facilitator—but he still knows his duties as a host. This,” and with his free hand he withdraws the gun from its hiding place, “is not an invitation, nor a suggestion, but a warning.”

“Then how should I heed the warning? I thought I was a simple man, but acquaintance with you has made me complex.” Sun Quan pauses, reconsiders. “Or perhaps I was complicated before and now I am simple. Truly, I do not know myself when I am with you.”

Zhuge Liang smiles. “I will take that as a compliment.”

“I’m not sure it was.”

“Nevertheless...” They both laugh, then become serious. Zhuge Liang strokes the barrel of the gun. It feels alien. Sun Quan follows his movements, eyes dark with emotion. Zhuge Liang wonders if he inspires it, or the gun, or the threat of death, or if it’s a combination of all three. He sits up, handling the weapon with care. “How many bullets did he leave?”

Sun Quan takes the gun, detaches the magazine slot, and shows him the two cartridges nestled one on top of the other.

Zhuge Liang nods. “Then we must expect two men from Anhui.”

Sun Quan looks mildly surprised. “You’re that sure?”

“Gangsters can afford to be honourable. Warlords cannot. This was both warning and message.” Zhuge Liang looks at him. “Could you kill two men with those two bullets?”

“Perhaps if I was hidden in the undergrowth and saw them coming.”

Zhuge Liang raises his eyebrows. “Otherwise...”

“No.”

“Then let us employ a strategy. Let us create something from nothing.”

*

A day later, the village on Moganshan is abuzz with the news that the former warlord Sun Quan has been shot dead. The auntie responsible for cleaning Master Yen’s villa reports having heard two gunshots as she approached the property. In great detail, she describes to her avid listeners how she hid in the bushes and witnessed a body wrapped in a quilt being dragged out of the house, bounced carelessly down the stone steps, and hauled away. Despite the threat of discovery, she followed at a safe distance and saw the corpse rolled into a deep gully. Then, she says breathlessly, she hurried back to the villa and entered Sun Quan’s room, and saw the spray of blood on the walls and the bed-sheets, and the bullet-holes black in the plaster, and the gun on the floor.

When pressed, the auntie admits to recognising the identity of the killer. It’s Zhuge Liang.

*

The two men from Anhui arrive five days later, when Sun Quan’s death is almost old news.

Zhuge Liang waits for them with boundless patience. He drinks tea and plays the qin and practices calligraphy. At night he lights a lamp and places it in the window, and looks out at the darkness moving. His thoughts are like mist, and he endeavours to rise above into the brightness of the heavens beyond.

The men from Anhui knock on his door during a lull between downpours. He invites them in and prepares tea that goes untouched. One man is whipcord thin; the other looks fat in comparison. They both wear ill-fitting Western suits that fail to conceal their weapons. The fat one looks around the house, poking into closets, opening trunks, investigating the spaces between the rafters. The thin one sits with Zhuge Liang. They eye each other across the drift of fragrant steam from the teacups.

“In the village, they say you shot Sun Quan,” the thin man says.

Zhuge Liang lifts his cup. His hands are steady. “I didn’t murder him. Sun Quan killed himself, following the implicit orders of Yen Yi Sheng.” He pauses, adds by way of explanation, “Master Yen left him a gun.”

“Idiot,” mutters the second man, though it’s not clear to whom he’s referring.

The thin man studies Zhuge Liang. “Why did you dispose of the body?”

Zhuge Liang sips his tea before making a reply. “Sun Quan asked me to do it. Of course I wished to honour him with a proper burial, but he said it didn’t matter if his body fed the wild creatures and nurtured the earth of Moganshan, because his soul would fly back to Anhui.” He meets the thin man’s gaze. “The pain of exile is harder on some than others. He endured, but with much suffering. Now he is at peace.”

There’s a long silence while the thin man considers. Finally he gets to his feet. “Show us.”

Zhuge Liang takes them out into the forest. The ground is wet, their feet sinking into mulch and mud. It’s cold, the mist resting on their coats, sinking through to the skin, down to the bone. The second man complains all the way. The thin man examines the drag-marks left by the body, kneels to study the depth of Zhuge Liang’s footprints.

At last they come to the gully. For the first few feet there’s grass and soil, then it’s bare rock, splintering away into sheer faces. Halfway down, a sapling grows from a precarious ledge. Something heavy struck the tree in the recent past, for its trunk is shattered, white innards showing clean.

The gully is very deep. The bottom cannot be seen. From far below comes the sound of water. The wind hisses through the bamboo, shakes raindrops from the trees. The smell of wet earth is overwhelming.

The thin man stands close to Zhuge Liang, almost nudging him into the gully. “You didn’t kill him.”

“He took control of his own destiny.”

A loud silence spins out. The world is alive around them. Zhuge Liang feels nothing but awareness of where he is, who he is, what he is. He expects death to find him, and in that moment, that single brilliant, illuminating moment, he has no regrets.

The thin man sighs. “A wasted journey.” He turns away, begins to track back through the trees towards the metalled road.

The second man brightens, follows after him. “Are we going back to Shanghai?”

Their voices fade, lost to the rising wind. Mist eddies up from the gully and covers Zhuge Liang in silver. He stands on the edge, teeters for a moment, then takes a step back. He kneels in the mulch.

He’s shaking.

*

Two weeks later, Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan, under the names Kong Ming and Zhong Mou, arrive in Shanghai and take a ship to Hong Kong.


End file.
